


Never Hard to Find

by missmollyetc



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: Hockey Players-Canada, Hockey Players-Men, Hockey Players-Russia, M/M, Misunderstandings, National Hockey League, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2011-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/pseuds/missmollyetc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein Sidney Crosby gets laid, and Russian diplomacy saves the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**impertinence**](http://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/) a whole passel of time back. Thanks to [shihadchick](shihadchick.livejournal.com) for the excellent beta! <3

There was the after-party, and then the after-after-party, and when Geno finally wormed himself free from Kovy’s grip and his slurred ‘just one more shot, Zhenya,’ there was Sidney Crosby fucking a puck bunny behind a ficus on the fifth floor. Geno, clearly, had not drunk nearly enough for this. He stumbled backwards, getting his ass pinched in the elevator doors as they closed.

Geno jumped forward, and whipped a hand over his mouth to cover his yelp. He stared at Sidney's back, the push of his naked ass. His jeans and boxers were stuck at his thighs. His ass was really white. Geno licked his lips, and swallowed.

Oh God, Sidney was having sex. Sidney was having sex where Geno _could see him_ and...wow, that girl was totally faking. She was--was she waving at him over Sidney's shoulder?

Geno tore his eyes away from the...couple in the corner, but the ficus’ leaves kept shaking into his line of sight. Geno cleared his throat. Sidney froze. The girl grunted.

"I..." Geno swallowed. He looked up at the ceiling. "Is better...in room, okay?"

Silence, awkward as all hell, reigned. Jesus, Geno wished he kept vodka in his room like Ovie and Sergei kept telling him to. Sure, it probably wasn't for this reason, but it would have been there, and he could drink it. Maybe the mini-bar. Still keeping his eyes on the ceiling, Geno walked past Sidney and the girl, tugging on the hem of his shirt, back and front. He felt weird, shaky with adrenaline, like he'd taken a hit, but he hadn't slammed into the plastic just yet.

He fumbled with his key card at his door, but managed to get inside before any noises...started up again. The mini-bar had no vodka, which just proved everything his mother had ever told him about America, but Geno made do.

  
***

  
He’d managed to set his phone on the nightstand by his bed, in the midst of drowning his...whatever after last night, but the shrill old-fashioned _brrrring!_ of the tone Talbot had installed back when Geno couldn't read English still made him want to bury his head in the pillows. He smacked his hand out, and caught his little finger on the corner of the nightstand. Geno flopped over onto his stomach, grimacing, and reached out again, grabbing his phone and flipping it open.

He smashed the earpiece against his ear, and groaned.

"And good morning to you!" Brooks exclaimed.

Geno squeezed his eyes shut, and licked his furry teeth, grimacing at the taste. "What do you want?" he muttered.

"You," Brooks said cheerfully. "On the bus with all your gear."

Geno's eyes popped open. The room clock flashed 6:45 at him from across the room. He groaned again, letting his head fall back against the pillow. They were supposed to be on the road by seven.

"Shit," he said

"Shit," Brooks repeated. "Two minute warning: I saw Sidney heading your way."

Geno rolled to his feet, squinting against his headache, and grit his teeth at the bubbling lurch of leftover alcohol in his stomach. "I'll be down in three," he said.

"All right," Brooks said, "I'll save you a danish."

He hung up without saying good-bye, and Geno flipped his phone shut on his chest. He'd managed his pants, but last night's shirt still smelled like cigarettes and other people's stale cologne. The bed next to him was empty, looked like not just Sid got lucky last night.

Sidney had had sex last night. In public, like he couldn't wait fast enough to—Geno took a deep breath and held it before letting it out slowly, trying to calm himself.

Sidney Crosby, who couldn't decide what to do on a weekend without producing two calendars and an itemized list, had fucked a girl where anyone could see. It didn't make _sense._

  
***

  
The shirt was a loss, but the pants were still good, so he made it out of the room before anyone had to come and get him. Instead, he met Sidney at the elevator. Right by...the ficus.

Geno pressed the down button, and gripped the handles of his bag, resettling it on his shoulder. He watched the numbers above the elevator light up: _18...17..._

"Good morning," Sidney said, very calmly. He was using his 'Guys, we're down by two and if we lose than all the world loses with us, but emotions are for the weak' voice. Ovie had named it. He was very drunk.

Geno wished he knew less English than he did. "Morning," he said.

They waited for the elevator. Geno rocked on his feet. Sidney cleared his throat. Geno glanced over, and saw a splotch of color, a bruise, above the collar of Sidney's polo shirt. He blinked, turning his head just in time to see Sidney's ears bloom into red.

"Stop it," Sidney said.

"I—"

"Stop it," Sidney repeated.

He brought his hand up, and stopped, hovering right over the bruise on his neck. Geno could still see it, peeping through Sidney’s fingers.

"Was she—"

"I do it all the time," Sidney said. He swallowed, and dropped his hand. "Girls like me."

The elevator doors dinged open, and Sidney jumped inside the carriage. He turned around on his heels, and faced Geno, with his chin thrust out.

"All the time," Sidney said again, staring with a weird heaviness in his eyes.

Geno blinked. That wasn’t true. Sidney didn't...Geno didn't need language skills to know that was a lie. Sidney was serious and private and obsessed with doing the right thing. He didn’t do anything like what Geno saw last night; someone would have told him.

The elevator dinged again, and the doors began to trundle closed. Sidney put his hand out, and caught the right-side door.

"Aren't you..." He cleared his throat, and shook his head. "You should grab something from the restaurant here. We don't want to be late to the bus."

  
***

  
Geno suffered through the most awkward elevator ride, followed by the second most uncomfortable continental breakfast line, of his life and bolted for the team bus. He dimly registered Sidney choking on a bagel as he followed him out, but didn’t look back.

He took the steps into the bus in one lunge, and nodded at Steve behind the wheel as he moved past him. Most of the guys had already taken up the first six rows of seats. He kicked Talbot’s ankle out of the aisle as he passed, holding his overnight bag up in the air. Talbot looked up from his Nintendo DS, and snorted.

“The fuck, man?” he asked, eyes already sliding past Geno as he passed by. “I was almost to the fourth level!”

Zbynek smacked Talbot in the shoulder from across the aisle, blocking Geno’s path. “Lies,” he said. “Damn lies, Englishman.”

“You take that back,” Talbot said, sitting up as his very much not English accent thickened.

“I’m so glad we got that Netflix account for your birthday,” Joe piped up from a row over.

Geno nudged Zbynek’s arm out of his way with his knee. Zbynek frowned up at him as he passed, but his gaze soon left Geno to swing back towards Sidney coming up the aisle.

“Ha!” he shouted, and Geno froze right where he was, staring past the remaining filled seats to the blessed emptiness of the back. “I know this one, I rent Mean Girls. Sidney has _hickey_.”

Geno ground his teeth as the rest of the bus erupted into hoots and hollers and guys standing up out of their seats to take a look at Sidney’s neck. A couple of them slapped him on the shoulders as Geno walked towards the back, which was weird, but not as weird as everything else this morning. Behind him, he could hear Jordy cracking up, and Kris yelling something in too fast English.

He glanced over his shoulder to see Sidney standing in the aisle, patiently waiting until Kris stopped poking at his neck.

Kris glanced Geno’s way, grinning, before turning his head back towards Sidney. Geno tracked him, couldn’t help looking at Sidney’s neck and the bruise he’d decorated it with. He swallowed.

“I thought you were in a rush to get back, huh, Sid?” he asked, pinching Sidney’s cheek. He looked back at Geno, and waggled his eyebrows.

Sidney twitched his face out of reach of Kris’s fingers. A grin slid up his face, calm and satisfied, like he was rehashing a win in the press room. “What can I say, guys? She was really into me.”

The sound level in the room abruptly dropped, even Jordy’s evil giggle died in mid-breath. There was a brief, frozen moment where nobody seemed to know where to look, or what to say, and so Geno found himself just watching Sidney, trying to stare through his calm smile and distant eyes.

Brooks knelt up in his seat. “Um,” he said, with a cough. “I…sorry, okay, um—”

“Sorry, guys,” Sidney said, raising the hand not clutching his overnight bag in the air. “I’m not the type to kiss and tell.”

He slung his bag up into the overhead shelf, and took the empty aisle seat next to Flower, who was looking back and forth between him and Sid. Geno put his bag in the aisle seat towards the back, and took the window for himself. The glass felt cool under his forehead.

Slowly, guys started talking again, joking and throwing snacks across the aisle. Coach boarded just in time for Steve to close the bus door on his heel, and no one bothered Geno for the entire two hour drive. It didn’t make much sense, but he was grateful for it anyway.

  
***

  
On the plane, Geno sat with Jordy and listened to him talk about his brothers, and his family’s farm, and the things pigs got up to. Well, possibly it was nephews and not pigs. His English was more solid these days, but Jordy was clearly working himself up to saying something, and so he was talking pretty fast and a little too soft. Geno wished for vodka; lots of it, and someone who spoke a proper language to drink it with. He hadn’t been able to sleep on the bus like usual, for some reason, and now he could feel sleep sinking long fingers into his brain. It made him clumsy. His eyelids slid downward.

“Uh, Geno? You awake?” Jordy asked.

Geno felt a light touch on his arm, just a brush of Jordy’s fingers, and widened his eyes. “Yes?” he answered.

“So, um…”

He saw Jordy glance to his left, and followed his gaze. Dustin and Fleury were staring at him over the backs of their seats. Geno shoved his head into the headrest.

“Gah,” he said.

Fleury’s fingertips waved at him. Dustin’s beady black eyes stared over the little towel on the headrest. Geno glanced over at Jordy.

“What is happening?” he asked, very carefully. “Is prank? I still have shaving cream left.”

Jordy cleared his throat, and glanced over at the other two again. “Um, well, we were just…” he coughed. “See, we all figured, I mean…”

Dustin whapped him in the side of the head, and Jordy kicked the back of his seat. He scooted over, putting his back against the window of the plane, and stuck his jaw out. He glared at Dustin.

“I’m _getting to it_ ,” he said, and then looked back at Geno. “Look, I’m just—Geno, we all know that Sid is…Sid, but you don’t have to…I mean—”

“You can tell us the truth about the hickey thing,” Fleury said, over Jordy’s increasingly high voice. “I don’t know what this morning was all about, but—”

When had it become Geno’s job to interpret and explain Sidney’s weirdness? Jesus. “They fuck in hallway,” he said, grinding his voice out between his teeth. “I see them by elevator. Team has to pay for damage to ficus.”

“Wait, the one in the hallway?” Dustin asked. “That was _Sidney?_ With a girl?”

“Ew,” Jordy said. His nose scrunched.

Geno nodded. “Is weird,” he said. “Even for Sidney.”

Jordy’s mouth opened, then closed, and then opened again. “But I thought—”

Fleury stuck his palm over Jordy’s entire face, and pushed his head into the plane window. “Never mind what we thought, Geno,” he said, ducking Jordy’s flailing arm. “I’m sure…this is none of our business.”

He raised his eyebrows, and let go of Jordy’s face, wiping his hand off on Jordy’s chest. Dustin leaned over his shoulder.

“You seriously walked in on Sidney Crosby fucking a girl?” Dustin asked.

“Was puck bunny,” Geno said. “Is no big deal.”

“No, that’s weird, that’s... And you…I can’t believe you walked into that,” Fleury said. He looked over his shoulder and back at Geno. “Look, Geno, I don’t—”

Geno raised his hands. “I don’t know,” he said, cutting Fleury off. They were all three staring at him, like he was…like he was supposed to have an answer, when he honestly didn’t even know where to begin. “I don’t…no need to think about it. Now. I sleep, okay?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, only relaxing when he heard the sounds of them all settling back into their seats. He listened to the rumble of the engines and the guys chirping in the rows ahead of him until he finally fell asleep.

  
***

  
It just never seemed to stop. Deadspin had gotten pictures of Sidney leaving the club, half out of his button-up shirt, and suddenly every half reputable news show was making nasty jokes about spoiled stars and play dates with Patrick Kane. For weeks the minute Geno tried to forget the eye-searing image of Sidney having public sex, someone else in management popped up and asked him about it, like he was supposed to keep track of Sidney’s conquests.

Not that…he’d ever really heard of Sidney _having_ conquests, and not that Sidney was talking to him anyway. Sidney had gone from the bus to the plane to his house without once looking back, sitting back and laughing his false laugh in the face of every smug reporter. Geno stopped giving interviews.

  
***

  
Geno pushed open the door with one hand, carrying his stick and helmet in the other. A clump of guys were stuffed into one end of the locker room, looming over Brooks’ stall.

“— _cheating_ on him!” Pascal said.

Tyler glanced over his shoulder, probably at the sound of the door, and Geno saw his face turn white. He slammed his hand into Pascal’s shoulder, rocking him into Mark and Comrie. Geno rolled his eyes, and stumped his way to his own stall.

“Who is cheating?” he asked, sitting down to unlace his shoes.

There was a short silence. “Hi Geno,” Brooks said. “We’re just talking about the new GTA.”

Geno sighed. Right, and his mother was Queen of Sheba. The guys shuffled amongst themselves, slowly breaking up to walk to their own stalls. Geno glanced over at Sidney’s empty stall. He’d left him on the ice. Sidney had stopped really talking to him after the plane ride. Six games. It was no big thing.

Geno yanked hard on his knotted laces, setting his left leg out straight in front of himself. Nothing was anything. Sidney could have sex with whoever he wanted, and if he wanted groupies than who was Geno to say he couldn’t. Sidney had… He’d always had _groupies_ , and if Sidney had always treated them like actual fans before then it still wasn’t any of Geno’s business.

He toed out of his left skate and started work on his right. It just didn’t make any sense, though. Sidney signed autographs, and posed for pictures, and then he took Geno out for steak to help him with his English. It was what they did. Or, rather, it was what they used to did. Do. Done? Sidney had not spoken to him in a while, maybe he’d finally remembered to be embarrassed that the story seemed to have gotten out. Geno would have been upset, if people knew his sex life. Sidney hated people knowing anything about him at all.

His jacket pocket began to buzz, his cell rattling against the side of his stall. Geno leaned back to grab it, reaching over his head. He fished the cell out of his pocket, and flipped the top open to mash against his ear without looking at the caller ID.

“I have just heard the funniest story in the world,” Ovie said, in Russian.

Oh fuck. Geno sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“To tell you a funny story!” Ovie exclaimed, sounding like he was already half a bottle into whatever party he’d created. “Sasha got it off some hockey blog. It’s about Sidney and some girl in a garden center.”

Geno grit his teeth. “What?”

“No, really, Sidney! With a _girl_ ,” Ovie said. “And that’s not the best part. See there was this Rhododendron —”

Geno hung up. He made it through his upper padding, and skates before his phone vibrated again, this time with a text.

 _Shit,_ it said.

Geno sighed, and stood up. He shrugged out of his suspenders, and took off his pants, before un-taping his socks from his thighs. He wadded up the grimy tape into a ball, and tossed it at the nearest waste basket. His hockey socks sagged down to his knee guards, elastic long gone.

He took extra care to remove his gear, unwrapping every piece and setting it aside, while around him the guys undressed and made plans for after practice. He let it flow over him, even the short, awkward silence that bloomed when Sidney walked past him to get to his own stall, and then the rising tension as the guys tried to make up for it. Fuck it all.

His cell vibrated again. Geno stood up in his sweaty t-shirt and shorts, already pulling the shirt over his head. He smelled horrible, even to him. His legs ached.

Sidney cleared his throat behind him. Geno paused. It was weird that he could recognize Sidney’s cough. Geno glanced around, but it looked like he’d dragged out undressing enough that the room was mostly empty. He turned around, tossing his shirt in his open gear bag. His cell stopped buzzing, probably gone over to voicemail.

Sidney was already dressed, of course, in jeans that were practically ironed and a t-shirt that had an alligator on it. His hair was wet, and plastered to his forehead. The tip of his long nose was red, still, from the cold of the rink.

“So I was thinking,” he said, loudly. “Do you want to pick up girls?”

Girls, Geno was sure, loved men who smelled like a thousand sweat socks. Geno wouldn’t know; Geno liked men. He liked them after they’d showered, though. He stepped into his jeans, and buttoned the fly, glancing around the mostly empty room. This was a prank, it had to be. There was a hidden camera pointed right at his face. He caught Kris’ startled eyes, and glanced away. His phone vibrated on the bench.

He turned back to Sidney, who was watching him, teeth caught on his lower lip. His nostrils flared as he breathed. “I mean, we could do it together,” he said. “The girls, I mean. We could pick up girls. Together. You could be my wingman.”

Kris made a muffled noise from across the locker room, but Sidney didn’t turn around. Geno grabbed his fresh t-shirt from off the hook in his stall, and stuck his arms through the holes.

“No, thank you,” Geno said, putting his head through the collar.

His phone buzzed. He wanted to look down at it, but Sidney stepped forward into his space, and Geno couldn’t look away. Sidney’s breath was coming too fast. Sidney’s lips thinned; his eyes were showing white around the rims. He leaned forward.

“But, don’t you…I mean, we should, _you_ should come with me. We can get a steak after?”

Sidney was so weird. Geno didn’t even know what to do. He sat down on his bench, and Sidney didn’t step back, stuffing his hands in his pockets. Geno picked up his phone. It’d stopped vibrating, but he opened it anyway. Two missed calls and two voicemails from Ovie. One text from Sasha. He pressed OK, and the message popped up on screen.

_We will call your mother._

“I have date,” Geno said, and Sidney jerked like he’d been shocked. “I leave now.”

He didn’t wait for Sidney’s reply, already punching Ovie’s number on his speed dial, grabbed his gear bag, and left the locker room.

  
***

  
Ovie let his first call go to voicemail, but picked up on the third ring of his second try, just as Geno had made it out of the center to his car. He threw his bag in the backseat, and jammed the phone into his shoulder.

“Bullshit you call my mother,” he said in English.

“Geno,” Ovie replied in Russian. “Don’t you believe in the power of motherly love?”

Geno switched to Russian as well, just to make sure Ovie understood every word. “I believe that if you tell my mother about Sidney’s idea of good sex—”

“So the Rhododendron _was_ true!” Ovie crowed. “Oh, wait until I tell Sergei, he didn’t believe me, even though we showed him the blog!”

“Who is ‘we’?” Geno asked, sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Sasha and I,” Ovie said. “He likes all the blogs. I just like the pictures.”

“I hate you,” Geno said.

“You mean you love me,” Ovie said. “Are you as bad in English as you are in Russian? No wonder Sidney is—”

Ovie broke off with a cough, and Geno could hear Sasha yelling at him through the phone. He had a few minutes then. Geno plugged the phone into the Bluetooth, and fixed the headpiece into his ear.

Clearly, Ovie had his speakerphone on. “—and it is _not_ Geno’s fault that he is dating a slut,” Sasha was saying.

Ovie made a hurt noise.

“Not that there is anything _wrong_ with being a slut,” Sasha muttered.

“I am not dating anyone,” Geno said, talking over the sound of Ovie kissing Sasha.

He pulled out onto fifth avenue, and clicked his seatbelt closed one-handed. He squirmed in his seat as he drove towards the intersection.

“Stop it, both of you,” he said.

Ovie grunted, but Sasha was actually a good person (with horrible taste in men) and said, “Sorry, Geno. He’s been worried.”

“He’s been gleeful,” Geno said.

“Well, that too,” Sasha said. “But mostly worried. You know Ovie.”

“I am still here,” Ovie said.

“Yes, dear,” Sasha said.

Geno snorted.

“Well,” Ovie demanded. “Are you going to tell us why you let Crosby off his chain, or not?”

“I did not…” Geno sighed, and turned right on red onto Grant. “I do not have Sidney on a chain, Alex.”

Sasha laughed. “Geno, you had him dancing to your tune before you could even speak his language.”

Geno squeezed his fingers around his steering wheel. How far away was D.C. anyway? He could make it in time to hit Sasha in the mouth, and back again before the game with Edmonton.

“That is not true,” he said, instead. “Sidney is my friend. I didn’t…”

He cleared his throat, and slowed down, spying the light turn red at the corner of Sixth. The Toyota in front of him had a sticker of three stick figures in the back window, two children and a mother. Americans were very strange. Ovie and Sasha were very strange. Geno had nothing to do with anything about Sidney’s sex life. He _didn’t_ , and no amount of stupid teammates and foolish internet blogs and ridiculous… _whatever_ Ovie was would—

“Geno?” Ovie yelled. “Shout if you can still hear us!”

“It is not my business!” Geno shouted back at him, smacking his hand against the dashboard. “Sidney is not my boyfriend, and he did _not_ cheat on me and it is not _fair_ that he has sex with a girl where I can see, and then wants me to find girls with him, because it is not my _fault_ that he—that he…”

He hit the dashboard again, loud enough that he was sure Ovie and Sasha could hear it, and hissed when his knuckles caught against the vent. He sucked air in through his mouth, and pushed it out again, blinking rapidly. Stupid fucking Sidney. _Stupid_.

There was a slight ringing in Geno’s ears, not like a concussion, but still loud enough to be noticeable. He swallowed, and rubbed his tongue over his front teeth. It was nice that he still had them.

“You saw him having sex?” Ovie asked quietly.

“Oh, fuck you,” Geno said.

The light turned green, and he pulled out into traffic.

“No,” Ovie said. “I’m serious, he…how? Were you at the garden center with him?”

“What? There was no garden center—why do I keep having to talk about this?” Geno asked. “What did your blog tell you?”

“Was the part with the Rhodo—you know what, I don’t want to know,” Sasha said. “The point is…Sidney wants to look at girls with you?”

“No, the point is, I thought they were already dating,” Ovie said.

“Stop it,” Sasha said, “he’s upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Geno said.

“So he’s a mess,” Ovie said at the same time. “Maybe I should get Sergei in on this call.”

“No,” Geno said, sitting up straighter. “Don’t call Sergei, I’m fine.”

Ovie’s sigh sounded almost exactly like Geno’s grandma. It was horrible, and Geno resisted the urge to drive his car off the road. It’d get on the news, and then Ovie might come to Pittsburgh for moral support.

“Maybe we should come visit,” Sasha said. “There aren’t enough Russians on your team.”

Geno groaned.

  
***

  
It took most of the ride home to get Sasha to promise not to let Ovie come to Pittsburgh and ‘help,’ and another half hour to get Ovie to promise not to let Sasha come to Pittsburgh and speak to Sidney about his intentions. By the time Geno reached his condo, it was all he could do not to throw his phone into the nearest dumpster. He restrained himself with the thought of what his mother would say when she learned he’d ruined a perfectly good phone. One lecture on what she’d suffered under Communism was enough.

The elevator ride to his condo was blissfully quiet, and Geno let the cool metal of the carriage leach heat from his back. His chest felt sore, just a little, right over the breastbone. Geno rubbed his hand up and over his pectorals, hooking his fingers around his neck. When the elevator dinged, and the doors opened, he stepped out onto his floor. Down the hall, he could see Sergei sitting outside his door.

Geno sighed, loudly enough that Sergei looked up from his Blackberry. He stood as Geno walked towards him, and stuffed his phone into his back pocket.

“Sergei,” Geno said. “You,” he pointed his finger at him, “should be in Ottawa.”

“Geno,” Sergei said. “You need me to be here.”

Geno came to a halt in front of Sergei, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Is that so?” he asked.

Sergei put his hand to the back of Geno’s head, pulled him forward, and kissed him. Geno felt his shoulders slump.

Sergei sighed as he pulled back, and shook Geno’s head lightly. “Come on,” he said. “Let me in your ugly apartment, and let’s get drunk.”

Geno’s skull felt cold when Sergei let go. He licked his lips, and dug his keys out of his jacket pocket. Sergei leaned against the wall, while Geno unlocked the door to his place, lounging like he traveled eight hundred and seventy nine kilometers for no reason all the fucking time. Not that Geno had ever figured out how long that would take on Google Maps, or anything. Inside, he flipped the hallway lights on and tossed his keys into the change bowl he kept on a table near the door.

“Have you eaten?” he asked over his shoulder.

Sergei shrugged. “I could,” he said. “Do you have anything?”

“Leftovers, mostly,” Geno said. “From the Chinese place on fourth.”

Sergei followed him into the kitchen, and sat at the wooden table, watching Geno grab greasy cartons out of the fridge, and vodka from the freezer. Geno thunked the half-empty bottle on the table between them, and circled the cartons around it. He crossed his arms, and stuck his chin out.

“Well?” he prodded.

Sergei raised his eyebrows. “You still keep your plates in the same place?”

He twisted in his chair, pulling open the drawer behind him, and taking out two forks. Geno sighed, and turned back around to his cupboard. He kept the plates close to the stove, just like his mother did back home, although he hadn’t cooked anything more complicated than pancakes since he’d moved in. Sidney liked his pancakes; they were half the reason he kept inviting himself over to beat Geno at Lego Star Wars, and stayed too late to go home. Sometimes Geno thought Sid missed living with Mario more than he let on.

He pulled two plates from the cupboard, and set them down on the table, pulling out his chair with his other hand. Sergei had grabbed two glasses from the drying rack by the sink while his back was turned. He grabbed the bottle, pointing the neck in Geno’s direction. Geno waved his hand, and pulled a carton of food towards himself. He flicked the top open, and sniffed. Pork Chow Mein. He smushed half of it out onto the top plate, and passed it to Sergei, guests first, like his mother had taught him.

Sergei smiled at him, twisting the cap off the vodka. He poured two inches in both glasses, and set one in front of Geno, and then picked up his fork.

“So?” he asked.

Geno picked up his glass, and took a drink. He licked his lips, closing his eyes briefly against the cold searing rush of alcohol down his throat. “It’s nothing,” he said.

Sergei took a bite of noodles, and nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Eat, though.”

Geno opened the rest of the Chinese food cartons, dishing out the leftover Broccoli with Beef, and Honeyed Duck. He speared a bite and popped it into his mouth, chewing automatically. He could feel his shoulders starting to tense, waiting for the inevitable stupid questions. Sergei was like an old woman sometimes, always treating Geno like he was a child. Sergei only grunted, however, when Geno started to eat, and upended the rest of the chow mein onto his plate. They ate quietly, and Sergei made sure Geno’s glass was always filled—although that was wrong, because Sergei was in Geno’s home, and not the other way around. Still, by the end of the meal, the vodka was warm in his stomach, and his lips were pleasantly greasy. Geno let himself slump a little against his table, one hand underneath his chin.

“It’s not fair,” Geno said, muffling his voice in the heel of his palm.

“Probably not,” Sergei said, pouring him another drink.

Geno picked up his fork in his free hand, and swirled patterns into the leftover grease on his plate. “I didn’t…I didn’t _want_ to see Sidney having sex with her.”

Sergei swallowed a healthy amount of his own vodka. “Who does?”

Geno blinked down at his plate, and let his fork clatter to the table. “Nobody,” he said, grimacing, “but everybody makes me talk about it. Like I _care_ it’s on _blogs_ —” He picked up his glass and waved his arm out towards the back wall, sloshing his drink almost over the rim. “—like it’s the best thing to ever happen in the world.”

“Zhenya…” Sergei sighed.

“What?” Geno leaned forward, sticking out his chin.

Sergei clapped him on the top of his head, digging his fingers through Geno’s hair. Geno winced. Sergei looked him in the face, chewing on a corner of his mouth.

“Don’t spill your drink,” Sergei said, letting go.

Geno sat back in his chair, breath hissing from his mouth. He eyed the remaining vodka in his glass, swaying the liquid from side to side. “I just want to forget about her—it,” he said. “The whole thing. I’ll bet Sidney does, too.”

“Oh?” Sergei asked, quickly enough that Geno looked from his glass. “Did he say that?”

“Of course not,” Geno said. “It’s _Sidney_. He’s insane. He…he walks around like he—wanted the attention. He wore low-collared shirts until his stupid, ugly _hickey_ disappeared.”

Sergei blinked, and poured them both another finger of booze. “Sidney had a hickey? The blog didn’t mention that.”

Geno upended his glass, and took a large enough swallow to bring tears to his eyes. “She gave him one, apparently. Although, maybe because it was something to do.”

“What?” Sergei asked.

Geno slammed his glass down on the table. Sergei refilled it. “She was bored. She waved at me behind Sidney’s back.”

Sergei coughed into his hand, and then covered his mouth, eyebrows twitching. Geno glared at him. Sergei waggled his eyebrows even harder, until Geno had to look away. He eyed the cloth calendar one of the team wives had given him for Christmas, and fought to keep his mouth steady. Sergei chuckled, and Geno kicked him under the table.

“Stop it,” he said, turning back around, giggling, “it was traumatic!”

Sergei nodded, grinning. “I’m sure it was, but at least now we know Sidney’s bad at something.”

“Sidney has always been bad with girls,” Geno said. “That is nothing new.”

“Remember the time that one girl asked him to sign her boobs, and he started to hyperventilate?”

Geno laughed into his glass. “He made me get him a paper bag from the 7-11.”

“Or what about when those twins in Montreal tried to get him into a closet at the Parc Hyatt?”

Geno took a drink, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, giggling. “I think he still might believe they just wanted help getting towels off the shelf.”

“So what makes this girl different?” Sergei asked, watching him over the rim of his own glass.

Geno licked his lips, and felt a laugh evaporate in his throat. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she used little words. Sometimes it works for me.”

“Yeah, but you don’t want to fuck Sidney in a hallway,” Sergei said, looking at him steadily.

Geno shrugged. He put a hand to his stomach, and rubbed at a little ache above his navel. Had Sidney wanted to fuck in the hallway, right where everyone would see? It was bound to have gotten out. He just couldn’t picture Sidney saying yes to that; not in public.

Sergei tapped the toes of his shoe against Geno’s shin. “Zhenya…”

“Are you staying the night?” Geno asked, standing up. He braced himself on the table, blinking a little against the sudden headrush. He needed to start drinking more, if he was getting to be this much of a lightweight.

He pushed off from the table, and stepped out into the hall. “You can have the sofa,” he said. “I’ve got sheets somewhere.”

Sergei followed him out of the kitchen and down into the living room. He stepped over to the sofa, and sat down, leaning the bottle against the armrest. He looked over at Geno, and raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t make me call Alex for a conference,” he said. “He’s probably drunk enough now to think driving to your house is an excellent idea.”

“Don’t threaten me with people visiting,” Geno said. “You’re not my mother.”

“Now, there’s an idea,” Sergei said, grinning. It wasn’t a very nice grin; too many teeth. “Now sit down. I don’t want to talk about this anymore than you do. I was put on this earth to play hockey, not babysit.”

Fucking _hell,_ why couldn’t everyone just leave it alone? That’s what he wanted to do, bury the memory so fucking deep it never resurfaced again. Then he could go out and watch Sidney get girls and…Geno swallowed. No, he didn’t really want to do that, even though they were friends. Sergei waggled the vodka bottle in Geno’s direction, tapping his fingers under the Grey Goose logo. Geno ground his teeth. Sergei clucked his tongue at him.

Geno stomped around the back of the sofa, and threw himself into the opposite corner, keeping the middle cushion empty between he and Sergei. Sergei passed him the vodka without even asking, and Geno drank from the bottle, swallowing while Sergei turned on the TV to NHL Live.

Geno let the bottle fall to his lap, and leaned his head against the couch. Onscreen, Bob McKenzie was talking out of his ass about the Flyers. Sergei gestured for the bottle, and Geno let him take it, rolling his head against the back of the couch. They passed the vodka back and forth between them, while Sergei made fun of Kevin Allen, and Geno defended everything Olczyk said. Geno pushed down the simmering, oily heat in his stomach, licking his teeth and swallowing heavily. Finally, when the bottle was dangerously low, he turned his head towards Sergei, letting the couch take its weight.

“I’m stupid,” he said, quietly.

Sergei set the bottle between them, balanced carefully on the cushion. “Oh?”

Geno nodded, rubbing his cheek against the zig-zag pattern in his couch. He could feel his stubble catching in the threads. “Yeah.”

“How so?” Sergei asked.

Geno closed his eyes, and yawned. For once, he was going to let the alcohol make him sleepy. “I just…I feel like I lost a game, or something, but I don’t know why.”

He felt Sergei reach over and palm the side of his head, but the couch was very comfortable and suddenly Geno was very tired. Between one breath and the next, he let himself fall asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Sidney Crosby gets laid, and Russian diplomacy saves the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [](http://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**impertinence**](http://impertinence.dreamwidth.org/) a whole passel of time back.

The next morning Geno woke up with a small, furry dog in his mouth and a monkey pounding on his skull. He groaned, and leaned forward, grimacing as his neck muscles screamed at him. He was never falling asleep on the couch again, swear to God. He smacked both hands against his forehead, digging his palms into his eyes until red sparks shot across his eyelids. Aspirin. Aspirin was the only answer…maybe some water.

He heard someone—oh, Sergei—walking down the hallway, grumbling to himself as he walked towards the door. Someone was knocking. Geno sighed. Well, at least that explained some of the pounding outside his head. He moved his left hand under his chin and put his right hand beneath his skull, and jerked hard, cracking his neck from side-to-side. There, that was better. Maybe eggs? His stomach sent a spike up pain up his throat, and Geno swallowed. Or, maybe water. He hadn’t even re-hydrated after practice, had he? He was an idiot.

The sound of the door opening was particularly loud this morning, but Sergei was remarkably quiet, hopefully because his own head was ready to split any second. Geno swayed to his feet. He remembered buying aspirin on his last trip to the store. It had to be somewhere. He walked around the back of the couch, sniffing his t-shirt and felt his lips curl. He smelled like old Chinese food. He pulled the shirt over his head, and tossed it over his shoulder, scratching his chest. He glanced down the hallway, yawning, and saw Sergei in his boxers standing in front of the open door. Sidney’s face was floating over his shoulder.

“Oh my God,” Sidney said, and took a step back.

Geno blinked at him. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

Sergei sighed so hard, Geno could see his shoulders move. “Do you know, I never go through this in Ottawa?” he asked the ceiling, in Russian so it was probably meant for Geno, or possibly God. “They’re good boys up there.”

Geno frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh my God,” Sidney said again. His eyes were very wide. “I just—I thought Colby was _joking_ when…”

Sidney clamped his mouth shut, and shook his head. Geno squinted at him; it was very bright just then, and early. He glanced at the clock; it had just turned six. Why would Sidney come to his home so early?

Sergei sighed again, but this time chose English. “Sidney, come inside. I think Geno has eggs.”

“No, no I don’t want to, I mean I would be getting in the way and I—”

“Sidney,” Sergei said, moving forward. “I think you need to hold on a minute.”

His left arm came up, but Sidney was already backing away, babbling about ‘good times’ and ‘borders’ and things making sense now when that was _clearly_ untrue. Maybe Geno wasn’t hung over, maybe he was still drunk. He made his feet walk forward, picking up speed as Sidney started to disappear from his threshold, and found himself at Sergei’s shoulder, just in time to see Sidney burst through the door to the stairs, rather than take the elevator. He dropped his head to Sergei’s shoulder.

“What the hell is going on?” he asked.

“I should have brought my own liquor,” Sergei said.

  
***

  
Not surprisingly, it turned out that Geno had no eggs. He didn’t have any coffee, either, or cereal that wasn’t slightly dusty, so after Sergei forced him to shower and drink an entire sports bottle of water with four aspirin, they went out to Squirrel Hill to the diner Sergei had missed the most in Canada.

Sergei picked up a blini in one hand, and spread currant jam on top of it with quick passes of the knife in his other hand. Geno leaned back in his chair, and breathed in the steam wafting up from his mug. The coffee was so thick; he could see it sticking to the sides of his mug like jelly.

“Ottawa is too warm to have good food,” Sergei said around a mouthful of blini.

“What do you call Pittsburgh, then?” Geno asked, putting down his mug.

“Lucky.”

Geno laughed, and it almost didn’t make his head hurt. He put both elbows on the table, and rubbed his thumb in a little leftover butter on the plate with all the blinis. He licked his thumb clean, grinning, and Sergei rolled his eyes.

“Do you do that to all your teammates?” he asked.

Geno let his thumb pop out of his mouth. “Do what?”

“Suck on your fingers,” Sergei said. “I don’t even like guys, and I’m a little flustered. No wonder we used to find Sid staring off into space so much after team dinners.”

Geno opened his mouth, and then closed it, frowning. Sergei finished his blini, and began constructing another one, this time with butter and blackberry jam from the little tray.

“I think it must be your lips,” Sergei said, wiping the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. “They’re…puffy.”

“ _Puffy?_ ” Geno repeated.

Sergei nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “They’d look good on a girl. Kind of like an ugly Angelina Jolie.”

Geno grabbed a blini from the plate, and ripped a bite out of it. Crumbs fell onto the table.

“Very ugly,” Sergei said.

“I don’t know what anyone is talking about anymore,” Geno said, swallowing.

Sergei grasped the rim of his glass of tea, and took a sip, obscuring his face. Geno sighed.

“All right,” Sergei said. “Still hungry?”

Geno rolled his eyes. “No, grandma, thank you.”

“Shut it,” Sergei said, putting down his tea. “I’m down here on my own time, you know.”

“Well, I didn’t ask you to come,” Geno said, leaning forward over the table. He tossed his half-eaten blini onto his plate.

“That’s because you’re stupid,” Sergei said. “Get you out of Russia, and suddenly you’re a big man. I know, I was stupid like you when I first got here. Of course, now I have a hot new boyfriend, so maybe I’m having a mid-life crisis.”

Geno felt his mouth drop open, and shut it with a snap. He bent his head, looking out at the mostly empty diner and then back again. “You have a _boyfriend?_ ,” he whispered harshly. “When did that happen?”

“This morning,” Sergei said. “If Sidney wasn’t so paranoid, I’d be worried that Kovalev would be challenging me over your honor.”

“I…” Geno leaned back in his chair, swallowing. “We were not that drunk.”

“No,” Sergei said, nodding. “But Sidney is Sidney.”

“I…well, yes, but…is that why he left?”

“Look who’s joined the party,” Sergei said.

Geno blinked rapidly. “That’s not fair,” he said, trying to keep his voice down. The waitress was starting to stare. “Sidney doesn’t even know I—that I like men. He wouldn’t think that.”

Sergei groaned, and rubbed his forehead with the back of his wrist.

“Look, Zhenya, this clueless thing. It’s cute, I get it. It’s worked out pretty well for you so far, but”—Sergei raised a finger and tapped Geno’s chest—“you’re not getting any younger, kid.”

Geno felt his mouth start to pinch. He swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, and picked up his coffee mug. Outside the diner window, people were starting to come out onto the street.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Sure you do,” Sergei said. “Remember when you knew six words of English and two of them were ‘Look, Sidney’?”

Geno shook his head quickly. His foot began to tap underneath the table. He glanced over at Sergei, and looked down at the table. His stomach turned over.

“Sidney likes girls,” he said.

“Maybe,” Sergei said. “Either way, it’s time to grow up.”

Geno shrugged, taking a sip from his mug. Sergei cleared his throat, jaw working like he was about to spit. He sat back in his chair, and his feet kicked against Geno’s shins until they settled outside Geno’s legs.

“All right,” he said. “Let’s try something new, how did the story about Sidney and the garden center get out?”

“It wasn’t a garden center,” Geno muttered.

“Fine, maybe he went to Office Max—that is not the point, Zhenya.”

Geno shrugged again. “Then what is?”

“Do you remember the last time a story about Sidney and a puck bunny came out?”

“Sidney doesn’t fuck groupies,” Geno said automatically. He glared at Sergei. “That’s why this is so weird.”

“No,” Sergei said. “Sidney has had one night stands before, the stories just never made it past the bedroom door. Sidney chooses nice girls, ones who want just to have fun, not brag to their friends. Some of them even wore glasses.”

Geno shook his head. Sidney didn’t go out. He’d never mentioned any type of girl, never left Geno stranded at a club with no way back home. They went places together, and they left together. Sidney was the one who took foolish, handsy drunks back to their home and never mentioned it the next day.

“Yes,” Sergei said, nodding his head. “So what makes this one different? Why is it happening now, use your head for something other than stopping a puck.”

“Oh, like you can talk.”

Sergei raised his eyebrows, swirling his tea in his glass. “Well?”

"I don't want to think about it," Geno said. "It has nothing to do with growing up."

Sergei waited, eyeing him over the rim of his glass.

"It means Sidney knows," Geno said quietly. "It means he knows I think about his...body sometimes, and if Sidney can see it, then that means everyone _else_ knows about it--which makes Fleury make a lot more sense and..." He swallowed. He was going to be sick. Fucking Sergei.

Sergei leaned forward across the table, eyes wide. "And..." he prompted.

" _And_ he wants to make sure everyone _else_ knows he isn't _like_ that," Geno snapped. "Happy now?"

Sergei thunked his glass onto the table. "For fuck's sake, Zhenya."

Geno spread his arms out into the air. "Well, what else am I supposed to think? Why else would he go and--and _do_ that, like he wasn't _worth_ more than that?"

Sergei raked his nails over his head, drawing thin red lines across his scalp. "I just--what am I supposed to do with this?" he muttered.

"Go to hell, all right," Geno said. "Seriously, what is this bull--"

Geno's cell went off in his pocket six seconds before Sergei's began to ring. Geno fished it out of his jeans, still glaring, and flipped it open one-handed. Sergei rolled his eyes.

"What?" Geno barked into his phone.

"Why is Sidney calling me to ask how to say 'I am very happy for you' in Russian?"

"Kovy?" Geno asked. "Why—what?"

"Why is Sidney Crosby calling me on my day off to ask how to say 'I am very happy for you' in Russian?" Kovy said, voice tightly leashed. "Geno, what have you done?"

"Nothing," Geno said, watching Sergei finally pick up his phone from the table, and put it to his ear.

Sergei looked out the window. "Ovie? What do you want?" Loud, angry chittering burst out from his phone, fast enough for Sergei's head to jerk back. "What? _What?_ No, I—"

"Clearly you have done something," Kovy said, and Geno heard the warning rumble in his voice. "Sidney did not sound 'happy' about learning that phrase."

"Uh," Geno said. He tried to form actual words, but Sergei's head was rapidly becoming the color of borscht and it was distracting.

"What do you mean _debauched_?" Sergei yelled. "How do you even know that word?"

A waitress fumbled her tray to the floor, and stared. Geno grinned widely and shrugged in her direction, while she picked up her tray and retreated to the bar. Sergei held the phone away from his ear, and even from a foot away Geno could hear Ovie's hysterics. In his own ear, Kovy was very obviously practicing the calming breaths Dan made him take between shifts, so everyone made it off the ice with all the limbs they came on to the ice with originally.

"Where are you?" Kovy asked.

Possible answers to that question suddenly crowded behind Geno's teeth, all racing to get out first. He was in Alaska. On a train going through a tunnel and losing Kovy's signal. He was quitting hockey and moving back home with his mother. Kovy had the wrong phone number.

"In a restaurant having breakfast with Sergei," he said.

Kovy made a high-pitched whistling sound, and Geno hung up.

"Kovy is angry," Geno said. "Can I come live with you?"

Sergei glared at him. "According to Ovie, we're already married."

Geno considered this. "What does Sasha say?"

"Nothing," Sergei said. "He's too busy calling your mother."

  
***

  
Geno grit his teeth, and ignored the steady vibration of his phone against the plastic cup holder in Sergei’s rental. A screw tightened in the back of his head until he thought he could see little red flashes out of the corners of his eyes. He looked up at his apartment building through the windshield. Blue sky and white clouds; not bad weather for the last day of his life.

“You should get that,” Sergei said.

“You should turn yours on.”

Sergei nodded, squeezing his fingers around the steering wheel. “We should go in.”

“You first.”

Sergei nodded again, little wisps of his hair floated in the breeze he created. “Kovy still know where you live?”

Geno nodded, and the screw tightened again. He licked his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he said.

He listened to the rush of traffic behind them, and the sound of a car pulling into the lot. Really, he should have expected this the moment Ovie had called him yesterday. Had it really only been yesterday?

“Okay,” Sergei said. “So you’ve ended my life, and in return all I got was a passable breakfast and a hangover.”

Geno nodded. “You forgot the Chinese food,” he muttered.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” Sergei said, smacking him in the arm. “Let’s not forget your wonderful array of leftovers. The point is, I’m probably going to have to go into Witness Protection now, and it’s all your fault.”

Geno smacked him right back, and turned in his seat, putting his back to the window. “I didn’t ask you to come, you know.”

Sergei tossed his arms in the air. “What else am I supposed to do? You’re fucking up your life!”

Geno smacked him again; it felt good. The little red flashes in his sight pulsed a bit faster. “My life was just fine!”

“Please,” Sergei snorted, “you spend half your bench time watching Sid’s ass on the ice, and the other half not noticing—son of a _bitch!_ ”

Something thumped hard against the window behind Geno, and he twisted around. Ovie glared at him, with his wide forehead pressed against the other side of the glass, and his arm raised to the sky.

“Sasha,” he yelled. “Come quick, I think I caught them necking!”

  
***

  
“All right,” Sasha said, sitting down on the coffee table. “I wasn’t really calling your mother.”

Geno slumped back against his sofa, and exhaled in a rush.

“He was buying tickets,” Ovie called out from Geno’s bedroom. “We were at Reagan already.”

“It’s pretty cheap if you use Kayak,” Sasha said.

“I don’t care,” Kovy said. “We can share coupons later. Right now, I want to hear about Sergei and Zhenya’s secret love for each other.”

Sergei rolled his eyes, and crossed his arms over his chest. He sunk back into the recliner next to the sofa, and spread his legs over the carpet. “There is no such thing,” he said.

Geno caught movement in the corner of his eye, and looked over to find Ovie in the doorway to his bedroom.

“The bed has been slept in,” Ovie said, narrowing his eyes at Sergei. “And I found _these_ on the floor.”

He waved a pair of blue-striped boxers that Geno had never seen before in the air. Kovy made a grumbling noise deep in the back of his throat.

Geno winced. He wore boxer-briefs. He wished less people in this room knew that. Wait… Geno squinted, and then jerked his head in Sergei’s direction.

“You’re wearing my underwear?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s worse than we thought,” Sasha said, burying his face in his hands.

“I forgot to pack a bag,” Sergei said. “It’s not like I’m keeping them.”

“You can keep them,” Geno said, raising his hands. “I need an aspirin.”

Sasha raised his head. “Roofies?” he asked hopefully.

“Shut up, Sasha,” Sergei said, and kicked the coffee table.

“Don’t you tell him to shut up,” Ovie said, throwing Sergei’s boxers onto Geno’s sofa. “You’ve despoiled Zhenya!”

“Where do you keep learning these words? You don’t read,” Sergei said, sitting up.

“I could read,” Ovie said, putting his hands on his hips.

“He falls asleep listening to Masterpiece Theatre,” Sasha said.

Sergei nodded, as if anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours had made any kind of sense. He waved his hand in Geno’s direction. “Anyway, I slept in his bed—”

Kovy raised his eyebrows, and leaned over the back of Sergei’s chair.

“ _Alone_ ,” Sergei said, flipping Kovy off.

Kovy shook his head, and rubbed a hand over the thick bristles of his blond hair. “Geno,” he said, ignoring Sergei. His eyes narrowed. “You can’t cheat on Sidney just because he cheated on you first. That’s no way to heal your relationship.”

Ovie hmphed. Kovy shrugged. “Oprah,” he said.

Geno’s throat closed. He didn’t know whether to scream, or punch everyone in the room. Why couldn’t they all just leave him alone? He was twenty-four, not sixteen, and he wasn’t in a relationship. He didn’t even wa… Geno blinked. He dropped his head, and looked down at his sneakers, crossing his hands over his chest. Oh no. No he didn’t, he _couldn’t_. His stomach sunk against his backbone, gurgling.

“I am not in a relationship,” he said, pressing his fists underneath his arms.

“Don’t be stupid,” Kovy said, mouth thinning dangerously. “Of course you are. You’re really bad at hiding it, too.”

Geno lurched to his feet, and shook his hands in the air. “No, I am not,” he said. “I am not in a relationship. I’ve never cheated on Sidney. There is nothing to cheat on!”

“Geno, you once referred to Sidney’s house as ‘our place’ in front of God and the coaching staff,” Kovy said.

Sasha nodded. “And remember what happened that time Ballard hipchecked you into the boards?”

“Sidney…” Geno pressed his lips together, and shook his head. He rubbed the nape of his neck, trying press out the ache. “So Sidney is handsome,” he said.

Ovie waffled his hand in the air.

“Fuck you,” Geno said, coming around the coffee table. “Sidney is handsome. Sidney is…I have never once even _touched_ him, and Sidney—” he glared at Kovy. “who I am supposed not to hurt is out proving how very heterosexual he is by sleeping with women where anyone can see!”

Kovy breathed out through his nose, and shrugged.

“I know Sidney,” Geno said. He pressed his hand to his chest. “I know him. He finally—he finally noticed me staring at his ass, or some idiot mentioned it to him, and he decided to do something about it. You want me to be grown up, Sergei? Fine, I’m all grown up. I will face all the facts you want.”

Why did he keep having to raise his voice around a group of people he wasn’t related to? He wasn’t a child, for all they were treating him like one. Geno stood his ground, crossing his arms in front of his chest. He stuck his chin out, and bit the tip of his tongue between his front teeth.

“Kris told me Sidney asked you out to pick up girls,” Kovy said, raising his eyebrows.

Geno groaned.

“Kinky,” Ovie said, scratching beneath the thatch of hair behind his right ear.

“Shut up, Alex,” Sasha said. He looked back and forth between Geno and Kovy. “Is this true?”

Geno shrugged. “It’s Sidney. He doesn’t even like going to the bathroom by himself.”

“Shut up, Ovie,” Sergei said.

Ovie closed his mouth, rolling his eyes.

Sergei scooted forward in his chair. He clapped his hands together, and sighed. “All we’re saying Zhenya, is that for a man who isn’t in a relationship, you get taken out to a lot of steak dinners.”

Geno frowned. “How did you know about that?”

“ _ESPN_ knows about that,” Ovie said. “Why do you think we thought you were married?”

“Dating,” Kovy said, “We thought they were dating. Sidney’s not the type to get married without inviting the team.”

“Oh, and I am?” Geno asked.

Kovy shrugged. “You’re a little more impulsive. Brooks thought someday he’d get a call from Vegas.”

Geno rubbed his forehead, and squeezed his eyes shut. His headache battered against his temples.

“Oh?” Ovie asked. “And what else does Brooks talk about?”

There was a sound, like someone possibly throwing themselves at Ovie, and someone else blocking that person’s aim. Geno didn’t care; when his eyes were closed it was almost like he wasn’t surrounded by lunatics and Sergei.

“Just because you’re boring and married doesn’t mean everyone has to be,” Kovy said, with a little breathless hitch. “I happen to like women.”

“Women, Brooks,” Ovie said. “I’m sure they all scream your name.”

Geno’s eyes popped open before that mental picture could take hold. He found himself staring at Sergei, still sitting in the recliner. Sergei leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees, and rested his chin on his hands. He raised his eyebrows, and Geno felt the waves of his headache subside. He took a deep breath, and Sergei nodded, standing up.

Sasha immediately wriggled out from under Kovy on the sofa, and stepped into Geno’s line of sight. “Stop gazing at each other soulfully,” he said. “I can only solve one problem at a time.”

Sergei smacked him upside the head.

“Thank you, Seryozha,” Geno said.

“You aren’t helping,” Sergei said. “Now, that is enough arguing and disgusting innuendo. I have a plane to catch, and we aren’t solving Zhenya’s problems by bickering.”

“No, we sent you, and you _seduced_ him,” Ovie said, leaning against the back of the couch.

“You were never funny,” Sergei said. “Anyway, like I said, I have a plane to catch and games to win, so I’ll make this short. Zhenya, Sidney is an idiot. He’s a weird freak of nature who doesn’t understand how people work, sort of like Ovie but with more self-control.”

In the corner of his eye, Geno saw Ovie open his mouth and close it, shrugging. Sasha sat back down on the couch, his head next to Ovie’s hands.

“I know that—” Geno said.

“And you love him,” Sergei said, raising his voice over Geno’s. “You have loved him for about as long as I have known you. You mark your days by the number of times you see him smile. It’s sickening, but as your friend, I can’t let you delude yourself any longer, so listen very, very carefully to me.”

He stepped forward, and Geno stepped back. He shook his head, and bit down on the corners of his mouth. “The only people deluded in this house are the four of you,” he said. “I’m not…"

“You make Sidney Crosby human,” Sergei said. “I once caught him googling Magnitogorsk because he thought the Soviets must have done something to the training program there to produce you. He spends money on your entertainment. He recognizes that there are things _outside of hockey_ that make you happy. He did a very, very stupid thing, a mean thing, and then he did an even stupider thing trying to make you go along with it. You need to talk to him, Zhenya. So go and do it.” 

Sergei stopped speaking, and crossed his arms. 

"I would know if he loved me,” Geno said, as white noise buzzed in his ears. If he loved him back, Geno realized, as his throat tightened. Jesus, if Sidney loved him _back_. “I would feel it.”

Geno saw Ovie slide his hand down to rest against Sasha’s collarbones, head lowered. Sasha patted his wrist. Ovie had slept with everyone, Geno remembered, until Sasha had realized that Ovie had only really wanted to sleep with him. They were as out as two hockey players could be. 

“He will say no,” Geno said quietly. 

“Then come back here, and we will help you move on,” Kovy said. “Ovie brought his gold card. We’ll buy all the vodka in Pennsylvania.”

***

The sun was shining, and there was a light breeze making the trees lining the road sway gently. It was going to be such a horrible day.

Geno unrolled his window, and punched in the gate's security code to Sidney's neighborhood. He waved to Carl in the gatehouse as he drove past, and turned right on Absher towards Sidney's house.

Sidney lived about as far back from the main entrance as you could possibly get, and still be inside the walls. It kept photographers out, he always said, when the team teased him about it. Geno just thought he liked it because it let Sidney decide how much of the world he could deal with at a time. Not that Carl was a particularly vigilant security guard, but still, it kept Sidney from coming in to practice with that tic in his left eye that said 'people have tried to interact with me today, and I need to hit something.'

He could totally do this; an apartment full of overly invested Russian men believed in him. It was only a matter of going up to Sidney and saying...and saying...something. Something good. Something like what Sergei would say, or maybe Sasha, but definitely not Ovie.

Maybe something about his hair? It was...it was good hair, thick and curly, and he'd always wanted to know how it would feel against his fingers, against his mouth, and then there was Sidney's _skin_... Geno coughed, shifting in his seat. No, maybe not. He...he was only doing this to make everyone stop talking at him. Sidney would answer one of two ways: he would smile and evade and not let Geno finish until they stopped talking and Geno left, or he would yell and whine and not let Geno finish until they stopped talking and Geno left. Either way, he was getting very, very drunk tonight. His stomach curled into a knot, already heavy like lead beneath his skin. Geno tightened his grip on his steering wheel. Sergei was right, it was time to grow up; time to move on.

His cell phone vibrated on the passenger's side seat. Geno glanced at the lit face while he took the corner on Elteto Drive. Sergei's picture beamed at him from his cell phone. He sighed, and reached over to answer it.

"You will never let me go, will you," he said.

"Quiet, I have no time," Ovie whispered. "Sasha thinks I'm just in the bathroom."

Geno felt his eyebrows draw together. "Ovie? Where are you?"

"I'm in the bathroom, but the point is that I've got my phone!"

"This is Sergei's number," Geno pointed out, driving one-handed.

"Is it? Whatever," Ovie said. "I just wanted to let you know that I am absolutely going to help you with this. I won Sasha, I can do anything. I know just what to say."

"Sidney hates you," Geno said. "And Sasha started dating you because you drunk-dialed him every night for a month."

"That's love."

"That's _Stockholm Syndrome_."

"Whatever," Ovie said again. "The point is, I will tell you what you need to say. Now, how many times have you seen him naked?"

Geno choked. "I haven't!"

"Sure you have," Ovie said. "You share a changing room."

"You think I'm stupid enough to have looked?"

"Why not? I would have."

"We are not all born shameless," Geno said.

Ovie barked a laugh, and then immediately shushed himself. "Shut up," he said. "Do you want my help, or not?"

"No," Geno said. "I remember the last time you helped me."

"Yes, but I'm not trying to sleep with you _now_ ," Ovie said.

Geno sighed. "I don't want to talk about this."

"Are you worried about that? Some guys are weird about exes. We don't have to tell him!"

"Oh, I wasn't planning on telling anyone, " Geno said, slowing down for a left turn.

"Hey," Ovie said.

Geno bit his bottom lip. "Sorry," he said.

Ovie grunted. "Whatever."

"No, I'm sorry," Geno said, sitting up higher in his seat. "I didn't mean it like that. I..."

He trailed off.

"It's okay," Ovie said. "We had a nice week together. It's not your fault you aren't Sasha."

"Thanks so much," Geno said, lips quirking upwards.

Ovie laughed, a deep, rolling sound and Geno found himself grinning at the sound. Ovie was...Geno had just never quite got him out of his system.

"So what will you tell him?" Ovie asked, chuckling.

All at once, Geno felt his grin slip from his face. He looked out his windshield. Ahead of him, he could just see Sidney's mailbox and the beginning of his drive.

"Tell him you love him," Ovie said, breaking the silence. "And then keep telling him until he believes it. It worked for me."

Geno paused. "Or until he gets tired of saying no?"

"If he doesn't love you, he'll never get tired of saying it," Ovie said. "Don't worry, Sasha likes you. I bet you could stay with us, if I say it right."

That...what the hell, it was kind of nice to hear that. Geno breathed in through his nose. Furious, staccato knocking erupted over the phone line.

"Got to go," Ovie said. "Are you there yet?"

"Yeah," Geno said, putting the car in park.

"Then go sc—" something loud banged in Geno's ear. "Kovy!" Ovie shouted. "You are paying for Geno's door!"

There was a gurgling noise and a yell, and then the phone went dead. Geno flipped it closed, and tossed it into a cupholder in between the seats. He stared across Sidney's lawn at Sidney's front door. All the blinds were down, but Sidney's car was parked in front of the garage. Well, all right then. Time to be stupid, like Ovie.

  
***

  
The walk up to Sidney’s door felt like learning how to skate all over again. Geno stepped carefully, keeping off the grass, conscious of the tense stiffness in his legs, and his arms spread slightly for balance. A weight pressed down against his chest, like a slab of iron. Why couldn’t this wait? The off-season wasn’t that far away, he could deal with being ignored. It wasn’t so bad to have Sidney look through him in the locker room, walk past him like Geno was nothing while all the guys looked on.

Geno stopped, one foot perched on the step up to Sidney’s door. No, he needed to stop doing that. It was horrible to be ignored by Sidney, thrown out like a toy that didn’t work anymore, but Sidney would say no today, and maybe that would feel worse because then Geno would know. He’d have to get out of Pittsburgh, probably, because he’d made Sidney talk about his feelings, and Sidney would have him traded. He’d…he’d have to go live with Ovie and Sasha and listen to them have sex. Oh God, who knew what Ovie got up to with a man crazy enough to move in with him?

Geno lunged forward, and knocked on Sidney’s door, pounding his fist on the wood just beneath the ornamental brass door knocker. He took a deep, even, breath, trying to remember what worked for Kovy. He dropped his hand to his side, and waited.

For a long stretch, there was nothing, just the increasingly loud sound of his own breath dragging in and out of his mouth. Then, he heard a scuffling from behind the door, like someone leaning on it to squint through the peephole. Sidney always did that, even though it’d been painted over six months ago.

Geno wrapped his hand around the back of his neck. The door opened, and Sidney stood on the other side of it.

Every thought in Geno’s head, every half-formed plan, imploded in the back of Geno’s mind, filling his ears with white noise. Sidney had cut his hair sometime between yesterday and today, and shorn it close, leaving a dense, flat black pelt to cover his head with a spiky fan of bangs drifting off to the right of his forehead. He had on a t-shirt with a picture of a cruise ship with shark’s teeth riding a wave on it, and green sweatpants with holes in both knees. His feet were bare, long toes flexing on the wood paneling of his floor.

Geno opened his mouth, and forgot the English language. Sidney stared at him, white-faced. His lips were firmly pressed between his teeth. His left arm hung at his side, while his right disappeared behind the half-opened door. Sidney’s face twitched. His left hand clenched into a fist.

"Ya ochen' za tebia rad," he said.

His pronunciation was terrible, the ‘n’ was too loud, and his emphasis was on the wrong parts of the words all together, but, oh, Geno loved him just then. He loved him like he’d just scored ten hat tricks all in a row with an assist to cap them off. He loved Sidney like he must have always loved him, because this wasn’t a new feeling, now that he considered it, this feeling was an old friend, like something precious Geno had carried with him all this time, like a man on his anniversary might feel after thirty years and a thousand steak dinners.

Sidney’s mouth twisted, lips reddening beneath his teeth. His heavy eyebrows pulled down over his eyes. “Geno?” he asked. “Did…I thought I said it just like Kovy told me.”

Geno blinked, and shook his head. “Stupid,” he said. “Like Ovie.”

He lunged forward, over the threshold and into Sidney’s house, and Sidney backpedaled until his ass hit the small table in his entryway. Geno crowded him against it, not touching because he could see Sid was startled, and a startled Sid was a Sid in the mood for a slap fight. Geno raised his arms preventively in between them.

“Why girl?” he asked. “Why fuck her where I can see?”

“You weren’t _supposed_ to see,” Sidney said, trying to inch away. His eyes flickered down Geno’s body and up to his face in a nervous, twitching loop. “It wasn’t supposed to be you. I thought you’d be down at the bar for hours and…”

“No, Sidney,” Geno said, touching his fingers to Sidney’s chest. He felt adrenaline shaking his bones. His left foot began to tap on the floor. “Why… _the_ girl at all?”

Sid stopped breathing, Geno could feel it. His raw-boned face drained of color, mouth falling open just enough to see the bottoms of his front teeth.

“Step back, step back,” Sidney whispered. “I can’t—I can’t do it like this.”

Geno pushed off from Sid’s chest, moving away far enough that Sid could slide out and around him. He dropped his hands to his sides, watching Sid carefully shut his front door. He waited while Sid locked it in order: door lock, door chain, and then deadbolt. Finally, Sidney turned back around, hands behind his back. He stared at Geno.

“Do you…how come…can I get you something to drink?” Sid asked finally.

Sid was very brave, Geno knew, because he approached everything like it was a fight to be won and prepared for it all. But when he didn’t know what to do, he fell back on the routines that made him feel safe. He’d watched him charge an entire defensive line once, and then stumbled on Sid hiding in the bathroom, calling his sister to have her explain a locker room joke.

“I would like water, please,” Geno said, and stepped back to let Sidney lead him into his kitchen.

The curtains in Sidney’s kitchen window were open to the backyard, with sunlight pouring down into the stainless steel sink. Geno sat down at the kitchen table, and watched Sidney putter around his kitchen. He didn’t once look over at him, but Geno was used to that. Sidney went from cupboard to sink, and then turned to him with the glass extended over the tabletop.

Geno took it from him, careful not to let their fingers touch. He took a sip, watching Sidney watch him drink. “Thank you,” Geno said, licking his bottom lip.

“No problem,” Sidney said. He pulled out the chair across from Geno, and sat down slowly. He put both hands on the table, fingers laced together. “How’s Sergei?”

“Uh,” Geno said, and put down his glass. “Fine. Ready to go home.”

God, why hadn’t he learned more English before coming over here? Or at least _brought_ —no, actually it was probably better that he hadn’t brought any one with him to interpret.

“Do you…” Sidney looked down at his hands, and then back up again. “I’m sorry, you asked me a question.” He cleared his throat. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I should have taken her back to my room, but she was really hot and I—I haven’t really had a chance to get, uh, to get, um…”

Geno turned his water glass around and around in his hands, listening as Sidney’s voice trailed off. “Is your ‘meet the press’ voice,” he said. “I am reporter now?”

“No,” Sidney said, suddenly fierce, and then he bit his lip. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I had a plan, but next time I’ll be better.”

Sidney’s interlaced hands were shaking, his knuckles turning white with strain. Geno inhaled slowly, and exhaled his nerves until all he felt was a dim recognition of his twitching stomach. He pictured himself half-off the bench, one leg already slung over the side of the wall. Sidney’s left thumbnail sliced across its opposite, and Geno pushed off on to the ice.

He looked up, and met Sidney’s eyes. Very slowly, Geno stretched out his hands across the table and wrapped them around Sidney’s, rubbing his fingertips into the soft skin at Sidney’s wrists. Sidney shuddered.

“You tell me plan,” Geno said. “I tell you why you suck.”

Sidney’s hands broke apart, twisting his palms upwards until his thumbs were burrowing into Geno’s pulse points. He laughed, ducking his head, but he didn’t loosen his grip. Geno resigned himself to a bit of a sore back later, and rested his weight on his elbows.

“So,” Geno said. “You sex with girl in hallway, but you don’t want me see it. No, you _have_ sex with girl.”

Sidney nodded.

“And this was plan? Because that is plan like Ovie make.”

Geno blinked. Oh God. Oh God, it really was a plan like Ovie would make. Did Sergei have to be right about everything?

Sidney glared. “It was better than that,” he said.

Geno raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Yes,” Sidney said. “I was going to have a very public fling, and confirm that I like girls—”

Geno flinched, and began to pull away, but Sidney frowned, tightening his grip. His breathing picked as he spoke, like touching him had shaken Sidney enough to let everything else come tumbling out into the air. Geno was suddenly really glad he spent so much time around Sidney; he was used to cherry-picking words from the stream.

“—and then I was going to ask you out on a date so we could be on the down-low together, but then you _had_ a date already, and Colby _told_ me all the Russians had sex with each other, but I didn’t believe him because you never—I mean, you never even looked at Kovy once and I was watching you. I watch you all the time, I love—I mean, I really like the way you—you skate and you’re so—you’re just so _much_ that I have to keep my eye on you because you’ll change, and then I won’t be able to keep up off the ice, only I cannot believe you’re actually _fucking Sergei_ and I didn’t know about it. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sidney broke off, glaring even as he sucked in a deep breath. Geno blinked. Where the hell did he even begin?

“All Russians don’t have sex with each other,” he said.

Sidney pursed his lips, and raised an eyebrow. His nose wrinkled. “I roomed next to Ovechkin at the All-Star Game,” he said.

Geno paused. “All right, maybe many Russians sleep with Ovechkin—”

Sidney’s voice spiked. “Have _you_ slept with Ovechkin?”

“I am not sleeping with Sergei!” Geno yelled as a deflection.

“What? Oh. Really?” Sidney’s hands clenched over Geno’s wrists. “But you—he was in his underwear!”

“He kinds of disgusting,” Geno said, blinking away the sudden vision of Ovie waving Sergei’s boxers in the air. “I sleep on couch.”

“You slept on the couch,” Sidney said. Tension wrinkles in at his hairline suddenly disappeared, and Sidney’s spine unbent a millimeter. “You promise?”

Geno nodded. “Sergei is like a brother,” he said. “A mean, old brother. I never want to do…anything to him.”

An actual smile spread across Sidney’s face, and Geno rolled his eyes to keep from grinning back. He ignored the way his heart maybe thumped a bit faster at the sight, and pressed on.

“Sidney,” Geno said. “I not fuck Sergei, but you definitely fuck girl. In hallway.”

Really, he was not getting over that any time soon.

Sidney glanced down at their hands, swallowing. “I told you why,” he said.

“I know what ‘fling’ is,” Geno said slowly, “but not ‘down-low.’”

Sidney licked his lips, and rolled his head back and forth on his shoulders. “Shit,” he said.

He pulled at his hands until Geno let him go, and then tucked them under his arms. He clicked his teeth together. Geno leaned back in his chair. He picked up his drink, and sipped his water. Sidney’s eyes seemed to catch about level with his throat.

“It means I could…” Sidney cleared his throat, but there was a huskiness to his voice now that wouldn’t seem to go away. “We could…I thought maybe you liked me, and Colby said I talked more about you than he did about his wife, and even I know what that means, so I thought, we could be…together. Except we’re hockey players, so nobody can know. So…no, I’m sorry, I’m babbling again. Down-low is what you are when you’re doing something no one else can know about.”

Sidney’s arms flexed across his chest, stretching out his old t-shirt. Geno found himself following the path of loose threads up the seam at Sidney’s right shoulder. He licked his lips, and sat up a little straighter. Right. Okay. Right. This. Right now.

Geno set his drink down. “Sidney,” he said. “I need you to listen closely, okay? Pay attention.”

Sidney nodded. He put his elbows on the table, and leaned forward, catching his full bottom lip between his teeth. Geno swallowed. Okay, clearly, clearly this was going to be a yes. He was an idiot, and Sergei was always right and—fuck it, even fucking _Ovie_ had been right, and now Geno was going to have to be the one to be right from now on, because once he left this house than no one was ever going to let them live the past few weeks down for the rest of their miserable lives.

“You are idiot,” Geno said.

Sidney started in his chair, and almost leaned back, but Geno grabbed for him, and caught the edge of his sleeve. He gripped the worn cotton tightly, and shook Sidney’s arm.

“Is okay,” Geno said. “I am, too, but you do horrible things and I just act like teenager. So now I have final say in relationship.”

Sidney frowned. “The hell you—relationship?”

Geno nodded. “Yes, we are not safe to be out alone. Entire team thinks we are married anyway.”

“No they don’t,” Sidney said.

“Yes they do,” Geno said. “Jordy think you cheat on me. Fleury offered me self-help book.”

“I would _never_ ,” Sidney said, wrapping his right hand around Geno’s outstretched wrist. He leaned forward, biting his lip again. His Sidney, always believing what he said, exactly as he said it.

Geno felt his stomach twist, just a little. “Kind of did.”

“I…” Sidney shook his head.

“No more horrible things, Sidney,” Geno said. “Never again.”

Suddenly, he could see Sidney exactly as he had been with his back to the elevators, wrapped around that woman and prey for anyone to see. Had he kissed her? Licked her? She’d marked his neck. He’d let her touch him, and she hadn’t even had the sense to realize it was a gift. Geno tightened his grip on Sidney’s sleeve, and heard threads pop.

“You do not do that again,” he said, and took a very deep, very Kovy-like breath.

Sidney reached out, and brought his free hand up to Geno’s chest, warm fingertips just brushing his t-shirt. He nodded quickly. “I promise,” he said.

Geno nodded back, one quick up and down nod of his chin. For a moment, his mind was blank, taken up with the odd stretch of being over-extended across Sidney’s table, and the feel of Sidney’s breath puffing against his skin.

“They really think we’re married?” Sidney asked, as a smile began to lift the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Geno said, “Also most of Russia.”

Sidney blinked. “What?”

“Kiss now,” Geno said, tugging on his handful of sleeve. “I explain later.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Never Hard to Find](https://archiveofourown.org/works/803456) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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